The Meaning of Sanctuary

Lottie has a blown knee, which makes her unrideable, a banged-up and scarred face that douses any romantic thoughts of the beautiful equine, and she requires a special diet and a very understanding and patient farrier.  Because she is physically vulnerable, she cannot live with other horses in a pasture.  Lottie cannot be ridden and she cannot be a pasture companion to another horse.  Lottie just doesn’t make the grade, in any way that would make her useable again.  In her crippled and slow-gaited existence, she represents the epitome of the unusable, unproductive and therefore disposable life form.

     But Lottie is also the reason society needs sanctuaries, places of refuge for non-performers in a performanced-based culture. Lottie and all of the others like her who have been given sanctuary, are mere whispers in a world roaring with words such as performance, competence, viability and productiveness.  Lottie represents the almost forgotten values of other words such as kindness and compassion.  For if performance is indeed more important than kindness, then there is no place in this world for Lottie.  And the hunger that many of us feel, as humans, for a larger and more compassionate place for our children and ourselves will go unfulfilled.

     Lottie takes up so little room and yet because she can no longer perform, she is even denied that space.  And in society's denial of space, a final and ironic use for her is found.  She is sent to the slaughterhouse to endure all of its terrors, so that she can be food for the tables of Europe and Asiaand profit for corporations.

     Lottie and others like her are the only defense for believing in the critical importance of providing  sanctuary for horses in need.  The path to rehabilitate the rideable and useable horse, although important and noble, is too easily lost in the many justifications for performance-based value.  Sanctuary, on the other hand, is one of those words that pick at the collective conscience of society.  It picks at it because Lottie needs sanctuary, not from some great evil out there somewhere, but because she needs it from us, the you and me that make up society.

     Because horses are valued primarily for what they can do, they are in jeopardy from the moment they are born.  But then that should not come as any great surprise, for many of us have learned that our value as individuals is directly linked to whether or not we can perform, produce, or be competent at something. To fall into any other category is to become disenfranchised, a chasm the homeless, disabled, ill and aged often fall into.

     This is why Lottie is important.  She is a gentle but imperfect being, vulnerable in her inability to perform anymore and put before us to ponder her fate. The decisions we make about Lottie, and a thousand like her every day, become measures of who we really are as individuals and as a society.  Our collective character is shaped, not by the decisions we make about the beautiful, powerful or competent, it is shaped by how we treat the weakest and neediest amongst us.

     The sanctuary residents, the whole and the broken, become ambassadors of the promises we make and want to make for a better world.  And as visitors watch Lottie nap in the warm sun or graze on the green grass with her stable mates and friends they are able to see and experience the meaning of sanctuary, for it is painted in the bold colors of Lottie’s enriched existence.  Because there is a place of safety, hope and healing for Lottie, with all of her imperfections, then maybe, just maybe, there is also a place of safety, hope and healing for the rest of us.

Comments

[Shaysdusty]

Wow... this blew me away! I am definitly donating!!

[Louise Vertefeuille]

WOW! indeed. Yes, donating to such a worthy cause is something more and more animal lovers will do when they find out about the true meaning of the word SANCTUARY. (The article in the L.A. Times 8/27/08 should help with that. It led me to you...) Barbara, you expressed it so beautifully...I'm still crying...not because I'm sad, but because something wonderful like Dream Catcher exists. Maybe there is hope for the human race after all.